


few sons

by iphigenias



Category: The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue Series - Mackenzi Lee
Genre: Domesticity, M/M, Santorini, oblique discussions of monty's childhood through the lens of greek mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-24 23:06:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17713388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iphigenias/pseuds/iphigenias
Summary: “I didn’t say stop looking at me altogether,” he says when he’s quite regained his balance. “That would be a tragedy.”“A Greek one?” Percy smiles, sliding his hand around to the back of Monty’s neck and bringing his other up to join it.“Positively Euripidean,” Monty replies, just to make Percy laugh.





	few sons

**Author's Note:**

> i bought this book today and read it in 4 hours and here we are. i haven't read the ladies guide so if this goes against any canon in that, oops, but also, i do not care. sorry if anyone reading this wasn't as much of a greek mythology fanatic as i was as a child, but it shouldn't be too hard to follow. i'll put a full list of the references i make in the end notes.
> 
> title is from homer's odyssey: few sons are like their fathers—most are worse, few better.

Monty takes to reading during his recovery. He pays a pittance for a worn old volume of Greek mythology, author unknown, at the market stall down the street and around the corner from their rooms. It’s a curious little thing: cover torn clean off, binding barely holding the flimsy pages together. There’s an inscription in Greek on the index page that Monty can’t read, but the book itself is in English, which makes it all the more curiouser.

“Did you know, darling, that even after helping him through the labyrinth, Theseus abandoned Ariadne?” Monty is propped up against a hideous number of pillows in their bed; Percy lies sprawled on the floor in front of him, elbows on the ground and chin in one hand, the other rustling through the pages of sheet music spread out on the carpet beneath him.

“Hmm?” Percy says, more an acknowledgement than a question. After a moment he glances up at Monty. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”

“And I’ll forgive you just this once,” Monty says, unable to keep the frown on his face once Percy smiles at him. “Ariadne. She fell in love with Theseus and gave him an enchanted thread to guide him through the labyrinth but he abandoned her regardless.”

“Sounds like a cad,” Percy says, smiling with his chin still propped up in his hand. “Tell me she didn’t perish.”

“Well, no.” Monty looks back down at his book. “Apparently the god Dionysus pitied her and made her his immortal wife.”

“So Theseus was the loser in this after all.”

“Seems like,” Monty replies. After a moment’s pause he adds, “I like that.”

“Like what?” Percy is still smiling at him.

“That people don’t always live with the hand fate deals them. That things can change, and for the better.”

“Are you sure you’re not reading fairy tales?” That makes Monty laugh, which makes Percy’s smile widen and his eyes crinkle up at the corners in the way Monty loves.

“Quite, my darling. If only you knew the sordid details of the tales between these pages.”

“Oh?” Percy pushes himself to his knees and then his feet, moving around the bed to collapse on the side of Monty’s good ear, like he always remembers to do. “Enlighten me, then.”

Monty grins and closes the book, careful to place it on his nightstand before rolling over and into Percy, who catches him. “I can think of a few ways how.”

*

It’s a few days later when Monty thinks on it again. “Ariadne wasn’t even the worst of them, you know,” he tells Percy when they’re curled up together in bed, sheets flung off their bodies and window wide open to invite some pretense of breeze into their room, but unwilling to let go of each other to feel it. “Jason abandoned Medea after they were married with children.”

“Didn’t she kill the children?” Percy says, voice muffled by the pillow his face is currently squished into.

“Yes, but only because Jason left her.” Monty rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling. “She was a sorceress. Jason only succeeded on his quest for the fleece with her help, and he abandoned her.”

Percy shifts on the pillow, uncovering his mouth from the soft fabric. “Perhaps he was scared of her.”

“She was his wife.”

“Monty.” Percy’s voice is soft when Monty turns his head to look at him. “This isn’t about Jason.”

“No,” Monty says, turning to face the ceiling again. The heat in the room is stifling. “I suppose not.”

*

When Monty wakes the next morning it is to find Percy at their kitchen table, half-eaten slice of toast in one hand and Monty’s battered book on mythology in the other. “Perseus saved Andromeda from a sea monster,” is what Percy greets him with. “They married, had children, and stayed together until he died.”

“One,” Monty replies after he sits down and begins to butter his toast. “Out of how many?”

Percy closes the book and places it beside the jam. “Does it matter?” he asks back. Monty looks down at his toast.

“I don’t want to be like him,” he finally replies in a voice whisper-soft. Percy reaches across the table and splays his hand across the freshly healed scar that is Monty’s cheek.

“You are the furthest thing from him anyone could possibly be,” he says in a voice that brooks no argument, and Monty leans in to the touch in lieu of finding the words to answer.

*

Almost a week later Percy returns from a market visit with a basket of fruit over one arm and a book clutched in the hand of the other. “I looked for this one in your book but it wasn’t there. So I bought another.” He flips to a chapter two thirds of the way into the book and pushes it across the table towards Monty, who is sitting nursing a cup of hideous tea. Percy sets to putting the food away while Monty flips through the pages.

“Apollo loved him,” Percy says as he cracks open a pomegranate. He sits at the table and gives half to Monty. “He loved him and it wasn’t thought wrong, or sinful, or anything people think today.”

Monty reads the last few lines with shaking hands. “But he died.”

“All the heroes do,” Percy replies, the juice from the pomegranate running too bright to be blood down his wrists. “It’s the way that he lived that counts.” He meets Monty’s gaze and smiles. “All that counts is what _you_ do.” Monty picks up his own half; looks at the seeds and thinks of Persephone, of how no matter how dark and terrible the Underworld was for her, she always, always returned to her place in the sun. He touches a hand to his missing ear, almost unconsciously. Percy watches him through careful eyes.

“There were hyacinths growing along the path to the beach,” Monty says, letting his hand fall back to the table, close enough that Percy simply has to turn his over to touch. He does.

“We can’t change what’s happened to us,” Percy says, threading his fingers with Monty’s, sticky with juice. “But we can choose what will happen.”

“Like Medea,” Monty says, to which Percy smiles, and replies:

“Like you.”

*

“I have come to the conclusion that these Greek myths are, on the whole, profoundly depressing and utterly imaginary.” Percy looks up from rosining his bow and quirks an eyebrow in Monty’s direction. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Darling,” Percy says, placing his bow back in the case and standing.

“What?”

“Don’t look at me like that _darling_.” Percy moves closer until he is standing with his knees touching the bedspread, Monty’s legs bracketing his. “And asking me to stop looking at you is like asking the sun to wait before rising.”

Monty resists the urge to bring a hand up to cover his cheek but Percy knows him too well because he leans forward instead and rests his palm gently against the burns. Not to conceal; to caress. Like he’s holding something precious. Monty needs to close his eyes for a moment against the feeling of it all.

“I didn’t say stop looking at me altogether,” he says when he’s quite regained his balance. “That would be a tragedy.”

“A Greek one?” Percy smiles, sliding his hand around to the back of Monty’s neck and bringing his other up to join it.

“Positively Euripidean,” Monty replies, just to make Percy laugh.

“Well it sounds absolutely hideous, therefore I will never take my eyes off you again.”

“That doesn’t sound as bad as you might think,” Monty says, shuffling backwards on the bed and pulling Percy down with him until he’s lying on his back, Percy above and all around him, forearms braced against the mattress and hair falling forward so it tickles Monty’s forehead.

“I never had the thought,” Percy says, brushing up against Monty in the barest of touches that still manages to set him alight. “You know Athena made Andromeda into a constellation after she died.”

“I thought we’d agreed not to put stock into those stories.”

“I’m not.” Percy leans down and brushes his lips against Monty’s forehead, the end of his left eyebrow, the tip of his nose. “But stars are bigger than any of us, than Earth, even. And Andromeda became a whole constellation of them.”

Monty laughs. “If this is your way of telling me I’m well-endowed…”

Percy’s chaste kiss turns into a nip against Monty’s upper lip. “Trust me, darling,” he all but breathes into Monty’s mouth, “You’ll know when I’m telling you that.”

“Sounds promising,” Monty murmurs, beginning to arch up into Percy’s embrace, but pauses when Percy places a shaking hand against his chest.

“Just—” and it’s so strange for Percy to struggle with his words, Monty can’t help but hold this moment in sacred wonder, “—you’re bigger than everything that’s happened to you. You’re better than every _one_ that’s happened to you. And I love you more than anything.”

Monty raises a single, shaking hand and rests it against Percy’s cheek, who turns his head and kisses the palm. “I love you. More than anything.” When they finally kiss, it is not Perseus and Andromeda, nor Theseus and Ariadne; not even Apollo and Hyakinthos, though the story lies well-thumbed in the otherwise untouched volume by their bed. When they kiss, Percy is Percy and Monty is Monty and it doesn’t need to be a tragedy to be beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> myths referenced:
> 
>  **ariadne and theseus.** ariadne was the princess of crete who, when theseus arrived to kill the minotaur housed in the kingdom's labyrinth, gave him a sword and magical thread to guide him through the maze. he successfully slayed the minotaur, took ariadne as his wife, and later abandoned her having grown bored of her company. she was indeed found by dionysus, who with or without her consent, married her.
> 
>  **jason and medea.** jason was the captain of the argo on a quest for the golden fleece. in order to reach it he had to succeed in several impossible tasks set by a contrary king. luckily for jason, the king's daughter medea fell in love with him and, with her magic, helped him defeat the obstacles the complete his quest. jason married medea and even had children with her, but grew too afraid of her sorcery and abandoned her on an island where she murdered their children in retaliation.
> 
>  **perseus and andromeda.** andromeda was a princess in a kingdom threatened by the sea monster cetus who demanded human sacrifice. andromeda was supposed to be the next victim but perseus, following his victory against the gorgon medusa, saved her, married her, and had many children together. perseus died before andromeda but upon her death athena did indeed transform her into a constellation beside the stars that made up the perseus formation.
> 
>  **apollo and hyakinthos.** the god apollo grew enamoured with the spartan youth hyakinthos. there are two versions of his demise: one, while playing a game of discus, apollo threw too hard for mortal hands and killed hyakinthos with the force of his throw. the second, the wind god zephyros was jealous of hyakinthos and blew the discus into his path, killing him. in both, apollo mourned his lover and wished to become mortal himself so he could die, but as this was impossible he transformed hyakinthos into a flower instead, the hyacinth, which to this day is said to be marked with the greek symbol for loss.
> 
>  **persephone.** persephone was the goddess of spring who was tricked by the god of the underworld, hades, into staying with him and becoming his wife by consuming three pomegranate seeds whilst in the underworld. her mother, demeter, made a deal with hades so that her daughter would only spend half the year - winter and autumn - in the underworld and the other half - spring and summer - above ground.


End file.
